About This Blog

The UK Web Focus Daily blog was set up in 2011 to provide my open scrapbook of jotting, ideas, etc. I'd prefer it if posts on this blog were not publicised or linked. Comments can be provided, though please note that the ideas are in early stages and arguments will not be fully formed.
These jottings may inform the publication of posts on my main blog, the UK Web Focus blog.
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Yesterday I spoke to Mike Sutton, AKA @tagoid and developer of the Tagoid service for recording details of Twitter hashtags. I had commented that the tweet sent when the service is used – “I just made [tag] more awesome, check it out [url]’)” – was rather excessive. Mike responded immediately and shortly afterwards allowed this tweet not to be sent when a new tag definition is created 🙂

In our Skype call I heard that although tag definitions can’t be edited, new definitions can be created and links to versions will be provided. I suggested that services such as TwapperKeeper and Summarizr could make use of this facility – it seems to fit into the ecosphere of small and focussed Twitter applications which are closely integrated but developed independently of each other. However there will be a need to ensure that such services continue to run – I noticed recently that the link to WTHashtag from Summarizr wasn’t working. It seems that WTHashtag had ceased to exist: the Web site currently states that:

WhatTheTrend.com took over “What the Hashtag?” over a year ago to keep the service alive as the original owners were no longer able to. We funded the site and kept it going solely as a service to the users of the site.

For the past months, the site’s traffic has overwhelmed the server it was running on, often causing downtime for hours. Additionally, and maybe most importantly, Twitter’s recent changes to its Terms of Service (TOS) now prevent us from providing transcripts of conversations around a hashtag.

In light of these events, we’ve decided that it was no longer feasible to keep the site running. If you were a user of the free services we offered, we hope that you enjoyed them. If you are interested in the other services we offer, we encourage you to visit WhatTheTrend.com.

This makes we wonder whether the future will be small applications which test the water and emonstarte there is a need for the service, but the sustainability of such services may be questionable with poissibly the functionality being provided by a larger player.